How a mojito helped me get my mojo back

Let me state clearly here, that when I say mojo, I mean spark or vitality and not anything else!

This is all going to sound very sentimental and deep, but I feel I have to get it off my chest... 2 years ago I suddenly stopped smiling, and although the smile gradually came back, there was something else that didn't fully come back, and that was the spring in my step. That could have been partly due to what was a very truamatic time in my life, but I also put it down to the rehabilitation I have been undergoing. You see, part of 'facial retraining' is retraining your expressions to make them look more normal. And in my case that meant smiling more demurely in order to keep it nice and symmetrical. This was pretty tough for me, as I was someone whose characteristic facial expression was an enormous smile and the zany sense of humour that goes with that. On seeing my new and even 'Mona Lisa' smile people would say 'ooh, you've almost recovered' which in turn pushed me to replicate it further. The problem was that this somewhat fake expression required a great deal of conscious effort and a total inhibition of natural, spontaneous emotion. I'm sure any shrink could tell you that doing this would get you down over time. And it did. Well, a few weeks ago I decided to change all that, I would do the 'big' smile even if it was wonky. Every day I would allow myself to react and laugh spontaneously to the things that happened around me, rather than control myself. Just a couple of times a day though. Then a week ago at my residential work conference things went further; with the help of a few drinks (I don't normally drink, so I never quite let go) and some cheesy music I finally let go and started smiling whevever I felt like it and not thinking about how I looked. The emotional effect has been incredible, I feel soooo much happier. Of course I do still sometimes control my smile, that in itself has become a reflex over the past year, but I'm hoping that in time I can find a sort of balance between the two (with or without mojitos :-)).